Reflection is an evolving concept. When you’re young the instruments to do reflection are limited. We have a narrow window of time to reflect upon and only a mirror. Now that mirror could be one of those hand-held ones or wall size. My grandparents must have done a lot of reflecting. They had a mirror in their small living/family room on 52 Britt St. in south Buffalo that took up an entire wall. It “created space” as my mother would say. A pilot study and one class in action research represent the hand-held mirror, only a beginning in the wall-sized area of professional reflection and examination. My sister is a filmmaker and did a short video modernizing the allegory of Narcissus. In this version there were many new tools for the character to see his reflection; glasses, store windows, silverware, TV screens that were turned off, etc. From a research standpoint, we now have pocket-size digital audio recorders, e-journals, e-mails, digital cameras, flip video cameras, cell phones that act as digital audio recorders, iPhones with numerous applications, all that facilitate recording of time and playback later. With these new tools are we reflecting any more accurately? I don’t think so. Reflection takes a high degree of tranquility for some. While I have been finishing up a hectic week of school and more school, my sister has gone on a ten-day retreat. Not that it is her intention to reflect, but does it take the isolation from all surrounding variables, a virtual halt to all distractions, to access the finer mental mechanisms to reflect? Henry David Thoreau’s lament, “I’ve traveled far and wide in Concord,” supports the notion that there is a lot of space to be explored within oneself. In research, does it take invariance in all measuring tools to get more truthful results? Does the action research process allow for more breaking of the traditional rules of experimentation in pursuit of possibly more profound results? Where social equity concepts meet the market there is a practice of individuals paying on a sliding scale – according to what they can afford. A graduated tax schedule is another example of adjusting measures to the context of the individual. Should we as researchers be able to cater our measuring tools around the individual subjects and spontaneously calibrate according to the moment and environment? Is there room for improvisation? The counter argument would be that results are only profound when you stick to the rules. The manipulation of the measurements has to happen at specific times, there are rules to messing with these things. In action research there is a built in system for reflection. The most obvious tool for this is the keeping of a journal. I did not need to extract myself from the world I worked in. All I needed was a notebook to jot moments down to expand later. A second tool available to action researchers is the method of code-recode. This makes the researcher take a step back after collecting data and either let someone else to the decoding or allows the researcher some space before analyzing the data themselves. With a pilot study this period for reflection is limited and it is presumed that a longer action research project will involve a series of experimentations with alterations in methods and subjects and new reflections upon each new series of research. I think it is this scientific approach applied to teaching methods that made sense to me. If you break all the rules you won’t even know what rules were broken to begin with or what rules should be broken next time. Some kind of constant must be maintained in order to measure change. I believe it is the confluence of this coursework and my own classroom experience this year that has matured my beliefs on teaching. I was offered a position as a long-term substitute of an

My reflection on EDU 520 – Teacher Learner Research and Inquiry By Rajesh Barnabas

English class, where the previous teacher basically left for personal reasons and because students were “so bad.” I was told that an eight-grade block at the end of the day would be my toughest, and it has been. Every day I think of what I could do differently to make things go better. And some days I have it figured out, I think, while other days there is no sense of progress. Never has there been more of a need for action research. I need a systematic approach that produces results that can be applied immediately. Action research appears to be the closest tool available for me to do this. And I don’t have to quit what I am doing and extract myself from the test group. I am part of the experiment. It reminds me of gonzo-journalism, a practice exemplified by Hunter Thompson, a writer for Rolling Stone Magazine, who immersed himself in the story rather than simply observing it from the outside. Whether you believe quantitative or qualitative approaches are more effective, all academics would agree that primary sources are extremely useful in research. And what is more primary than a teacher actually in the classroom; ‘where the rubber meets the road.’ Having a background in journalism and political activism, I appreciate the immediacy of action research. It puts the power of the pen into the teacher’s hand. The course material and instructor demonstrated ways to question and also create research rather than only consume and be consumed by it. My pilot study was about an issue that was personally interesting to me and political in nature. It was one of those unspoken topics that every once in a while surfaces and makes people emotional or reactionary. The topic was race and teaching. Specifically, how much of a factor does the race of a teacher have in the overall educational performance and thinking of students, teachers, administrators in urban schools? Many of my assumptions were challenged in the data collection process. In interviewing four minority teachers, I learned a tremendous amount about their individual philosophies on education and the process helped me investigate and invigorate my own thinking on these matters. I also helped the teachers I interviewed reflect and remind themselves of what they were doing their job for. So the process by itself had its benefits, even if the eventual results proved less than conclusive. In preparing for our groups’ presentation of class material – Teacher Research and School Reform: Lessons From Chicago, Curitiba, and Santiago by Joseph C. Fischer and Norman Weston, I had a profound moment where everything in this course was connecting. The material from the chapter was about the challenges of teaching underprivileged students in other cities around the world. I found comfort and inspiration in the narratives of teachers trying to do the same kinds of things I was doing. It gave encouragement that maybe my small pilot study in Rochester could be an inspiration to someone on the other side of the planet. This made me feel connected to a larger cause. The research element of this course helped me lift my head up from the day-to-day movements of my classroom and school and look beyond for connections. The course and its instructor have helped expand my framework for looking at educational issues and broadened my social context. I have traveled far and wide with EDU 520 – Teacher Learner Research and Inquiry.